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Beauty

The bush these grow on is taller than I am. Each cluster of blossoms is the size of a softball. I see Creation showing off again these days, everywhere I look.

According to the Internet, the writer Alice Walker said this about beauty: “Whenever you are creating beauty around you, you are restoring your own soul.”

Perhaps that’s true, but there’s more. What I would say is, this: Whenever you really see the beauty that already is all around you, you are restoring your own soul. Call it mindfulness if you like, or just call it being truly alive.

So what exactly is Beauty, and why do we crave it so?

The poet/priest John O’Donohue wrote, “We feel most alive in the presence of the Beautiful for it meets the needs of our soul. For a while the strings of struggle and endurance are relieved and our frailty is illuminated by a different light in which we come to glimpse behind the shudder of appearances the sure form of things. In the experience of beauty we awaken and surrender in the same act. Beauty brings a sense of completion and sureness.”